


Never Been Sick

by HindsightHero



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, M/M, Mute Dirk, Sick Fic, not quite fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-04
Updated: 2013-06-04
Packaged: 2017-12-13 21:53:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/829284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HindsightHero/pseuds/HindsightHero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>See, the funny thing about there being no humans around, was that there were no living people with the capability of contracting diseases. Which also meant, there was no one to spread them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Been Sick

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posted from Tumblr
> 
> Because I was literally dying of the flu and promised dozygoats in a fever induced break of sanity I would write a fic where Dirk gets sick.

Your upper neck is sore and it reminds you exactly, of that time you were fighting on the rooftop and the C2 vertebrae in your neck collided with the corner of the staircase with a resounding clunk and crack.

It isn’t enough to see stars, but damn if it didn’t feel like that was a distinct possibility. From the pressure induced pain emanating from within your skull, the viewing of an entire fucking milky way system seemed highly reasonable.

Had you been in a fight and missed the memo?

You are on what is possibly the most comfortable and well maintained meteor in the universe, hurling through space, and its not just your neck that’s hurting.

Its everything.

You’d been through brawls in your life. Thousands. But, this feels different. You feel weak, dizzy, and cold.

Really fucking cold.

Did this meteor ice over last night or something?

Slowly, you sit up from the sheets and you definitely don’t miss how they cling to your miraculously moist body, which, wait.

Oh ,your skin is warm.

And your breath, wow, that’s actually really fucking nice when you’re shivering to the bone.

Groggily, a word which you have never once used to describe yourself, you reach over for the shades and try to uplink. If you could just get a message to Dave maybe he could tell you what’s going on. 

TT ssomethingssssssWw ronnnGgg. 

You try, but there must be a lag in the connection.   
Usually there’s no problem. Maybe you’re just tired.

So you take a breath, reminding yourself of the inferno that has become your mouth, organize the thought and try again. 

TT: Something. Is. Wrong.   
Its not perfect but at least now you don’t look like Roxy hacked your system.

TG: hey dude good to see youre still among us living folk.  
TT Living? WwhatT? Howw many Causualttiez? 

Fuck. Focus. 

TG: Woah chill. No casualties. Just joking.  
TG: The fort is secured and the privates are all tucked away in their quarters.  
TT: DavvE.  
TG: Dirk.  
TT: Help.

You meant to type more, but your vision blurs and you felt like you’re going to hurl, so the connection gets disrupted. Blacking out can do that. You try to make a mental note to fix it. Somehow.

The room was freezing still, and your nerves were on edge. Everything in your body was exhausted, and ached. Your throat hurt more than normal, and if you didn’t know any better, you’d have thought the scene playing out looked just like something from one of those movies Jake sent you what felt like years ago.

But it couldn’t be. 

You were technically dead, and in space, there’s no way you could be-

There’s a whistle that comes from the door. When your eyes focus, and you try to blink away the pressure to no avail, you see Dave motion to his handheld. Fumbling, you try to uplink again. When you do, the neon red text assaults your eyes.

TG: Somebody’s sick.  
TT….. ……….Sick.

 

There are a lot of things you can learn in an apocalyptic future devoid of any form of human contact.

Like, how to ward off aliens and robots with whatever is closest to you. Or, how not to trust anything that moves because it probably wants to kill you. If it’s eyes are glowing, it definitely wants to kill you. You might have even programmed it to do that.

You learn that humanity was pretty fucked up, but it had managed to leave enough wonders of science like Wikipedia and scrapped artificial intelligence programs alongside the mountains of waste that were buried under the water that surrounded your old home.

You learned how to program computers based upon all the rusted motherboards and spare parts that were left lying around in the wake of humanities destruction.

What you didn’t get the chance to learn, was what it meant to be sick.

See, the funny thing about there being no humans around, was that there were no living people with the capability of contracting diseases. Which also meant, there was no one to spread them.

So eventually, all those germs either mutated to latch onto some other poor living creature like, you don’t know, those fucking seagulls. Or, the germs just died off. Either way, you had never been sick a day in your life, and the idea was never that appealing so you were sort of fine with that.

Until now. 

—> [BE DAVE]

The man before you looks just short of death warmed over and you do not know how to deal with that.

You had avoided hero-worshipping him, since after the initial shock of meeting you both came to realize the other was not your respective guardian, and that you were both about the same level of fucked up. Well, maybe Dirk a bit more. Living in complete isolation and being raised by a puppet probably does more damage than just being assaulted by them at odd hours in the day. At least you had human contact. Dirk didn’t.

Still, he was taller than you by like an inch, and somehow won all of your strifes in the last two weeks. He spoke about things on a level you had only really known to belong to Rose, and quite frankly he just intimidated you. 

So when you walked into your room only to see his hair a mess, and his skin white as a damn French aristocrat getting ready for the ball of the century you had to stop yourself. Because this? This man was fucking pitiful.

TG: yes sick. don’t seem so shocked, being a god doesn’t excuse you from the good ol pestilence   
TG: you should’ve seen me and rose a month ago.   
TG: shit was awful.   
TG karkat kept yelling every time I sneezed on him and ended up locking himself in his room for days.  
TT: Dave.  
TG: good times  
TG: guess the germs were still in the bed though gross  
TT: I’ve never been sick.

You pause. 

TG: well that’s dumb  
TT: How is a lack of . Contractinng an Infectious. Disease a sign ofa lower IQ?  
TG: how the fuck have you gone so long without getting sick dude  
TT: Hard to get sick from robots.

You inwardly wince because he had a point. But beyond that, what if Dirk had gotten sick? All alone, nothing but shitty robots to help. You remember all the times you were sick, and how even if Bro was a dick and didn’t let up on the ambushes or general assaults, he still went to the store and got you medicine. You still woke up to AJ and cough syrup by your bed, and the discarded tissues miraculously swept off your floor. 

You still had someone to take care of you.

TT: Dave?  
TG: sorry, stay here a sec. ill go see if rose knows where we put the medicine from last time.

You end the chat, and head out the door, trying not to look back. Still, you hear the comforter shift as Dirk curls in on himself and if you didn’t know better you’d have thought you heard his teeth chattering.  
He was miserable, and for some fucking reason that made you miserable.

Of course he had never been sick. That made perfect sense. But how does a person deal with a person who probably thinks they’re dying?

Well, he had already died, but beyond that.

This was so fucked up and you feel absolutely useless.

—> [BE THE SICK ONE]

You don’t know why Dave disconnected so fast, but you don’t really care. The sting in your throat was getting worse the longer you were awake, and you were trying not to panic at the fact sometimes it felt like you couldn’t breath. 

Your body was killing itself and you had never felt so weak in your life.

After a moment, you try to type a message to Hal only to realize, he won’t be there, and suddenly you just feel lonely.

Its usually something you can ignore. Something you lived your life feeling, so it became less of an emotion and more of a state of being. Still, you had people…things, around you. Squarewave, Sawtooth, and AR. Then later, people to talk to like Jane and Jake and..

Fuck, Jake.  
You forgot about Jake. 

A shiver runs up your spine and you curl into Dave’s sheets further, desperately seeking more warmth. The pulsing in your head gets worse and its like the universe is aware of exactly how to make you top notch miserable. Prize worthy levels of misery were occurring right before your eyes and you’d give your life a medal for its incompetence if you didn’t feel like such utter crap right now.

When the metal door swooshes open again, you’re too tired to move. Too tired to read the text that flashes in front of you.

You don’t care about anything, because everything hurts and you’re broken, and you’re useless, and your brain is slow and its driving you mad, and you just want everything to stop.

You want the ringing in your ears to stop, and your mouth to stop feeling like the Sahara. You want your muscles to stop hurting, and for your body to stop shaking. You want your body temperature to stop rising, and you want the thoughts to stop pouring into your head like some nightmarish montage of your pathetic life.

But then the bed dips beside you, and you hear Dave unscrew a bottle and then pause. You can feel him hesitate, just before you feel his cold fingers touch your forehead and its nice. Its really nice.

“Shit..” you hear him mumble, and his hand pulls away. You mourn the loss.   
He wipes his hand on the comforter, and its only then you realize you’re probably still sweating.

“I need you to sit up and drink this.” he says, and you nod against the pillow, resulting in your shades falling halfway off. Still, you don’t care and promptly forget to sit up.

“Dirk.” You hear, but you still don’t move.

The next thing you know, Dave is shaking you, and there’s a puddle of drool at the corner of your mouth.

By the time your eyes focus on him, the boy looks terrified and you wonder if something happened. 

Quickly, Dave’s face relaxes, and so does the hand on your shoulder. Then a snicker escapes his lips and you’re willing to bet its due to the face your making upon realizing exactly how much drool had flowed out of your mouth. 

“If I wanted a swimming pool on my sheets I would have asked dude.” he says, and you just reach up with the worst coordination in your young life, and wipe at your mouth.

“Now, drink the damn medicine.” Dave asks again, and with a disgustingly wet hand you sign OK, OK.

Whatever it is, it tastes like oranges, and in the back of your mind you wonder if Dave made it that way for you.

The medicine coats your throat, and you want to chase it with soda but you can’t.

“Get some rest Dirk” he says, and you feel him get up from the bed, and leave.

You want to sleep, and maybe you do, but it just feels like a haze of nothing. Of sticky skin, and shaking muscles, and the pain is so overwhelming, so constant, you want to cry.

You never cry, but the next thing you know there’s tears in your eyes and you’re sobbing into the pillow because instead of feeling better you just feel worse and you can’t deal with it.

You can fight, you can give yourself stitches, you can look at a sword wound and not think twice, but this was different. This you couldn’t control, and you couldn’t escape from it. You couldn’t disconnect, you were just worthless. Alone, and worthless, and disgusting, and sick.

You wanted to sob, but the sound just came out breathy, and choked, and that just made you cry harder. 

Tears were strange, and crying hurt, and you hadn’t done it in so long you were convinced you forgot how. 

Apparently not.

—>[BE DAVE AGAIN]

You are Dave Strider, and there is a man in your bed, sobbing into your sheets.

You’re pretty sure its sobbing, but either way the sounds do things to you that make your chest hurt and the cool bro in front of you looks like he just got the news they’re cutting his chemo and he’s got a week to live. The kind of guy who wants to go home to pet his cat in his last remaining days only to find his wife took the cat and split and his house got fucking foreclosed so he doesn’t even have a couch to sleep on. The kind of guy whose soul has been resigned to the trash heap of society and he’d care if only he didn’t feel like he deserved to be there.

Basically, Dirk looks fucking lonely.

The sounds hush as you walk closer, muffled by the comforter, but the hunched body is still the same. Its still shaking, still miserable.

Well, here goes nothing. Time for some Grade A Hollywood style comforting.

“Hey…so, I take it you aren’t feeling better yet?”

Silence.

“..being sick isn’t all that bad. I mean, you get to lay in bed all day, right?”

Silence.

Okay fuck that.

“No. You’re right. Being sick sucks balls. You feel all kinds of shitty and weak and you’re at world war five with your own damn immune system.” 

There’s still silence, but you see Dirk shift, and his head pops out from under the covers. He looks like absolute shit, with sunken eyes that only make his unshaded iris ten times brighter.

The dudes a god damn zombie.

An attractive one, but a zombie nonetheless.

“You probably don’t want to get up, right?” You watch as he shakes his head.

There’s a long pause, where you just kind of watch him fight the urge to fall asleep, and you know that talking isn’t an option. 

“Scoot over” the words fall from your mouth, and the next thing you know it you’re a entering no man’s land of sweat, germs and drool. You have no idea why you’re doing it. Its absolutely disgusting.

What’s less disgusting, is how almost instantly Dirk shifts beneath the covers and curls up against you. 

The warmth radiating from his body is suffocating, but you’ve dealt with worse, so you let him stay.

It isn’t much, but if there’s one thing you remember about being sick, its just wanting to know someone gave a shit. Something weird about feeling so useless and weak, makes you crave any kind of affection to let you know you’re worth something. 

You don’t remember the first time you got sick, or the second. You couldn’t have been more than five years old. But, it had to have been terrifying.

Dirk coughs, and then shakes, and coughs again, and then quickly pulls away from you as he tries to regain control of his own lungs. The coughs aren’t like your coughs, or anyone else’s, and you have to imagine what Dirk’s voice sounded like before the game.

By the time he stops, he looks terrified, and his arms are shaking. 

Slowly, you sit up, and rub a hand along his back like Bro would do sometimes. Just gentle strokes, in a circle. You feel him tense, the muscle in his back seizing up at the unexpected touch.

But then he relaxes, and you can’t help but smile.

Dirk is absolutely miserable. He’s sick, and you know he’s fighting against his control issues and losing horribly.

You still smile though.

Because you know there’s no one else on this meteor that Dirk would let so close to him. Not when he was so weak. Not even when he was fit and healthy. He would fight with Karkat, debate with Rose, and sure, he spent a lot of time with Roxy.

But he hadn’t messaged anyone else. He messaged you.

You smile because…that’s kind of nice.

Dirk squirms under your palm suddenly and you realize that your hand had never stopped moving. 

“Sorry” you mumble and pull away, but you catch him shake his head, and sign a quick ‘Thanks’.

There’s a pause, and you ignore the feeling in your chest for the third time today.

“Alright…well I’m thinking if I’m gonna stay here, we might as well be entertained, and in my experience the best cure for the flu is some high quality shitty movies. You game?”

**Author's Note:**

> Technically this was my first time writing anything for Homestuck and I had a 103.7 F fever in a foreign country. I don't know what I'm trying to say but I hope you understand anyways.


End file.
